


Takes Four To Tango

by EllaStorm



Series: Edge Of Forever [1]
Category: Take That (Band)
Genre: (sort of), Dirty Talk, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Neck Kissing, OT4, Porn with Feelings, Semblance of Plot, Ultimate Tour, Voyeurism, and figuring out which was where was not an easy feat, but i guess i needed this out of my system?, there were just a lot of body parts involved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 23:33:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16028309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaStorm/pseuds/EllaStorm
Summary: Just before the “Ultimate” Tour in 2006, in the wake of a steamy tango version of “It Only Takes A Minute, Girl”, the remaining members of Take That re-learn each other’s bodies and break down the last barriers between them.





	Takes Four To Tango

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly pure, unadulterated filth. But given that the "Ultimate" Tour (and everything before that) was mostly pure, unadulterated fanfiction fuel, please do cut me some slack, boys.  
> Should any of TT ever read this – my apologies, but unlike you in 1993 I don’t think about all the times I closed the door to keep my love within. Because I can’t keep it in. And writing porn about you is the greatest sign of affection I'm capable of. Yup.

“No offence, Gaz, but I always _hated_ performing that song,” Howard commented with a dark shake of his head, and Gary sighed. _It Only Takes A Minute_ was a hard sell, just like he had expected; and though he himself liked the song, and reckoned it a good idea to include it, he wasn’t blind to the frown on Howard’s face or Jason worrying the side of his lip. They’d promised to respect each other’s wishes this time around, and Gary had made it his priority to stand by this promise – mostly because he knew he was the one with the history of domineering everyone in this band. He wanted this to work. And _Take That 2.0_ would only work if they acted as a team that made shared decisions. Up until now it had gone far better between them than Gary had let himself believe. He wasn’t going to ruin it, because of one damn song he liked more than it probably deserved to be liked.

“We don’t have to, if you don’t want to. Really.”

Howard’s frown turned into a small grin. “Old Gary would never have said that.”

“Old Gary was a bit of a prick sometimes,” Gary retorted with a shrug, and Howard gave Gary’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

“Don’t be too hard on him, Gaz. He didn’t know better.”

A warm feeling settled in Gary’s stomach and he sent Howard a smile that was immediately returned. He’d always liked Howard, liked the wordless twinkle in his eye that could turn into a full-belly laugh in a matter of seconds when he found something funny, liked his easy physical affection and his dry, laconic sense of humour. Liking Howard was easy; and looking around at Jason and Mark, Gary realised that it was just as easy to like _them_. Jason for his quiet insightfulness, his warmth, his emotional intelligence. And Markie...oh, really, how could you _not_ like Markie? He was the glue that had kept this band together for the longest time in the Nineties, the sunny smile on bleary-eyed rehearsal days, the hand on your shoulder and the comfort in your ear when you’d had a shitty weekend. He’d been the one who Rob had held onto for...

Oh, Rob.

Gary really wanted to say that Rob had been different from the others, that it had been a lot more difficult to like him, but even after all the terrible, terrible things Rob had said over the last few years, Gary knew he’d be lying to himself if he believed that. He had found Rob just as easy to like as Jason, Howard and Mark, had admired the levity he’d brought into the group, envied the sheer fun he’d had performing... After about eight years of denial Gary had finally resigned himself to the fact that he missed Rob. As a member of _Take That,_ and just as much as a friend. Maybe, _maybe_ one golden day they’d be able to leave their tragedy behind and make a fresh start. But until then-

“Listen, we don’t have to get rid of it outright,” Mark cut Gary’s train of thought short, bowing forward on his chair and taking his glass of red wine from the coffee table in front of him, swaying it around between his fingers. “We should just do something new with it. Turn it into...ah, I don’t know. A tango, or something. Perhaps?”

“A tango?” Jason asked, sceptically; but Mark’s eyes had already lit up and Gary couldn’t help but smile. It was dangerously infectious when Mark got enthusiastic about an idea, and Gary had to rack his brains to think of even one occasion in the last fifteen years when that enthusiasm hadn’t gained at least a little bit of traction among the band. It might have only truly failed that _one_ time when he’d tried to convince them to modify the choreography of _Give Good Feeling_ to include a very naughty grinding-against-the-stage kind of motion...but thinking back, even with that he’d partially gotten his way. Gary felt himself blush a little, when he remembered what _that_ had looked like.

“Look, we could get a dancer in. Make a choreography. She could have a solo at the beginning. Tango: _dam-da-dam-dam, dam-da-dam-dam._ Then Gaz starts singing...” Mark stopped to take a thoughtful sip of his wine, leaving _Howard_ of all people to complete his thought.

“She could go between us, from one to the other and dance with each of us.” His eyes met Gary’s next to him and a quizzical eyebrow was pulled up. “Of course, Gaz would take part in the dancing, wouldn’t you?”

Gary swallowed hard. Jay and Howard had always twitted him about his habit of avoiding as many dance manoeuvres as he could possibly get away with, and his half-honest excuses about saving his breath for singing had never really convinced them. The truth was that Gary was fairly sure he looked absolutely ridiculous when he danced...and now Howard was playing him like a fiddle. _Bastard._

On the other hand, maybe tango wasn’t all that bad in comparison to, well, _You Can Do What You Like_ , to name just one unspeakably embarrassing example.

“And get your sexy on,” Mark added with a cheeky smile.

Gary reflexively looked down at his less-than-toned belly; and concluded that tango was the worst of all.

“No, seriously, let’s leave it out, if you don’t like it. I don’t like it all that much, either,” he hurried to say – and realised, too late, that that had been a tad obvious.

“You _love_ that song,” Jason countered, a somewhat knowing glitter in his eye. “I’m starting to believe you only want to get out of dancing, Gaz.” He made a small pause for effect. “I think we should do it. The tango. Just like Mark suggested.” With a content, elegant crossing of his long legs he leaned back in his armchair and grinned.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re the worst, Jay?” Gary gave back in frustration.

“Nobody ever quite as nicely as you.” Jason winked at him, and Gary’s frustration caught a warm edge of fondness; even though it was obvious at this point that he was going to lose this battle, no matter how hard he tried; he just couldn’t hold a grudge against Jay for very long.

Not to say, of course, that he wasn’t going to try and cheat the gallows at all.

“So, you’re going to make me dance? Tango? To _It Only Takes A Minute_?” he asked. “How am I going to sing?”

“Oh, we’ll think of something,” Howard reassured him. “I’m all on board with Mark’s idea, by the way. I like tango. And that insufferable song might actually be pleasant as a tango, for a change.”

“Hey, _the Tavares_ still wrote the thing! It’s not _that_ bad.”

“Matter of taste,” Howard retorted, but the sly grin around his mouth made it hard to take the criticism at face value.

“Fine,” Gary said. “Fine, three to one, I’m overruled. But I’m warning you. I’m going to embarrass the band, and also myself, and nobody will take this seriously.”

“Bollocks,” Mark said, putting his glass back on the table with a little more force than necessary. “You will embarrass nobody, least of all yourself. Look, it’s not that difficult. I’ll show you.”

“Now?” Gary asked, bewildered, but Mark had already taken his hand and pulled him from his comfortable position on the sofa, with Howard giving a little snicker that awarded him a stern over-the-shoulder-glare from Gary.

The suite they’d met in had been suggested to them by Howard. Situated in a hotel in the countryside it was a quiet, paparazzi-free place, easily reachable by car for all of them and equipped with two large bedrooms where they could crash in case the evening got a little more vinous than planned. The living room was particularly spacious, and so Mark had a big dance floor at his disposal. Gary suddenly wished they’d taken lodgings in a cramped motel with rooms so small there was barely space to walk from the bed to the door. That might have saved him.

“Head up, shoulders back. I’m the woman, you’re in charge.” That sounded a little naughtier than Mark had intended – or so Gary thought, until he looked him in the eye and saw the small, blue glimmer there. Mark had said it _just like_ he’d intended it to sound; and Gary felt that blush from earlier returning to his face, when he put his right hand between Mark’s shoulder blades.

“Alright, you’re taking two steps forward-“ Mark led him through the basic steps, matching each of Gary’s stiff, unsteady movements while attentively leading him around the room. Contrary to Gary’s expectations it was actually quite okay, and it got better as he started to relax. Mark seemed to notice, too.

“That’s good, Gaz,” he said, after a while, beaming – and as much as Gary didn’t like the prospect of dancing on stage, he liked making Mark smile.

“Didn’t you say something about _sexy_?” Howard’s voice chimed in, and Gary felt a spark of dread in his stomach.

“Have a little patience, Dougie.”

_Patience, indeed. Probably forever. With my non-existent dancing skills._

But it didn’t take Mark forever to move into Gary’s personal space, until their chests almost touched. He smelled like grass and summer and wine, the same as all those years ago, and Gary nearly lost track of his steps for a moment.

“Hey. Look at me,” Mark said, and Gary realised that he’d instinctually fixed his eyes to the floor. When he did look up, Mark’s face was a lot closer than before. Gary could count his eyelashes from here, if he wanted to, and Mark’s body heat was radiating through two layers of shirts in a very distracting manner.

Then he began to move, an inexorable slide and grind of his hips only millimetres from Gary’s own, and Gary’s jeans felt a little too tight and his mouth a little too dry all of a sudden, but he let himself be pulled into the dance, into _Mark_ , really, and for a few minutes he managed to forget about everything else.

When they came to a halt, Gary was still caught in Mark’s eyes looking up at him, stuck between one thought and the next, unable to move in or away; and it was Mark who finally leaned up and pressed a small, almost chaste kiss to Gary’s lips.

Gary felt like he was burning up when Mark let go and he was tempted to chase Mark‘s mouth, to give him a proper kiss, run his tongue over the seam of his lower lip, and elicit one of those breathy moans he’d always loved to hear. He wondered whether kissing the sensitive spot at the side of Mark‘s neck would still award him with these small, desperate noises, the clenched fingers in his hair that he remembered so well; and the urge to try it out became almost overwhelming.

  
Before he could move in again, though, Gary was interrupted by a low voice at his ear. „I think you‘re starting to get the hang of this,“ Howard murmured, in a cadence that made something hot coil up in Gary’s stomach, then moved past him, leaving an imprint of tangy aftershave in the air, and pulled Mark out of Gary‘s embrace, pushing his arms up over his head in one fluid movement, only to let his palms glide down the sides of them, brushing skin where Mark’s sleeves had slid down over his elbows. Gary figured he should be jealous in some way, when Mark let himself be taken away and led around the room by Howard in complicated tango-esque figures; but that wasn’t how it had been between them, ever, and so Gary found himself increasingly turned on instead. Howard was a good dancer - not quite as masterful as Jay, but he managed to compensate his lack in technique through sheer intensity; while Mark adapted to his dancing style as easily as if he‘d never done anything else in his life but tango with Howard.

  
And what a tango it was. Gary remembered vividly what it felt like to be pushed down on a mattress by Howard and kissed into oblivion, all planes of muscle and strength pressing up against him, and it looked like dancing with Howard ranked only closely behind that experience. Gary could see Mark‘s chest rise and fall rapidly, and going by his dilated pupils and the expression Howard was wearing, bodily exertion was not the only reason for that.

  
Like an afterthought, a warm, slender pair of arms slung itself around Gary‘s waist from behind, startling him a little, before he realised it was Jason’s chin on his shoulder. The scruff on his cheeks felt rough against the soft skin above the hemline of Gary‘s shirt - and this not-cleanly-shaven Jason was one of the things that was new, but not at all unpleasantly so, Gary found.

  
„They look good together,“ Jason said, and Gary placed his hands over Jay‘s long fingers on his waist, and tried to remember the last time they had touched like this; the last time they had all been together. The feeling of Jason‘s tall, lithe form against his back seemed way too familiar for it to have been ten years.

  
But they were ten years, no questions asked; and Gary felt an old, worn-out sadness nagging at him, thinking about how much time had passed. Still, with Jason’s arms around his middle, it was soon drowned out by the warm feeling that had been tiding up in his stomach and steadily flowing over into his bloodstream ever since they’d gotten together here. Despite the lingering dread that this might just be a beautiful dream after all, he was _grateful_ that they were back with each other, that they were _this_ again, five people forming something that was so much stronger and braver than each of them on their own.

  
_Four_ , he remembered. _Four_.

The thought stung, and Jason must have noticed the slight stiffening in Gary’s posture. He was scarily good at detecting things like that, small shifts in demeanour and body language, and more often than not he worked out the reason for it a lot faster than anyone approved of.

Like right now.

  
„I miss him, too, you know.“ Jason pressed the words into the skin of Gary’s neck. „He was a pain in the arse, and I didn‘t get along with him eighty percent of the time. But I miss him. Terribly.“

  
„He belongs here. With us,“ Gary responded, as he watched Howard‘s hands drift lower on Mark‘s back while his hips lost themselves in an obscenely watchable grinding motion. This was no longer a tango. Not that Gary minded. Quite the opposite, actually.

  
„He‘ll come back, Jay. I know he will. He hasn‘t forgotten,“ Gary said, with a confidence that surprised himself.

  
„None of us have,“ Jason whispered. His lips started moving up Gary‘s neck, pressing butterfly kisses on every inch of skin they could reach; and Gary let the thoughts about Rob drift away, out of his consciousness, and focused on the now. It was wonderfully easy to let his head fall back against Jason’s shoulder, twine their fingers together, close his eyes and let Jay cover his neck in kisses, that soon turned into tugs, licks and small bites. Jason had moved into him, pressed their bodies closer together; and it felt good to be in this position, with Jason all around him. Safe. Like nobody could ever hurt him again.

A small draught was all the warning he got, before a less tall, familiar body stepped into his space. Mark’s face smiled up at Gary’s surprised expression, his hands settling on his chest, suspiciously close to the button row.

“You weren’t going to get the party started without me, were you?”

“I think if anyone in this room got anything started here, it was you and How, Mark,” Jason dryly commented over Gary’s shoulder.

Mark’s grin only broadened.

“Speaking of...” Gary looked around the room for Howard and found him lounging in a chair right next to the fireplace, a relaxed, but definitely interested expression on his face. He raised his brows at the question in Gary’s eyes.

“You know I like to watch the show, Captain Barlow. Though, in my humble opinion, there are still too many clothes involved with you lot.”

Gary knew. Of course he knew. This was not the first time they did this. Only the first time in a long time; and that brought him back to the realisation that his body didn’t look like it had, when they’d last been together – not even close. So, he stopped Mark’s fingers before they could open the first button on his shirt and cleared his throat.

“I’m not...It’s not that I don’t...I mean.” He had to clear his throat once again, before he got it out. “I don’t look like I used to. With, you know...”

Mark shut him up, before he could say another word, by pulling him in by the lapels of his shirt and giving him a kiss, a real, proper, tongue-and-teeth kiss that made Gary’s knees go weak. When Mark stepped away, his lips were red and his cheeks pink, and Gary had forgotten what he’d wanted to say.

“You stupid, stupid man. Do you think I care? That anyone here cares? You’re beautiful. You’ve never stopped being beautiful. What can I do to get that through that brilliant, idiot head of yours, Gary Barlow?”

“Kissing me a little more might do the trick,” Gary retorted, his voice cracking at the edges; and Mark obliged only too happily. Jason, meanwhile, placed one more soft kiss right below Gary’s ear shell and then proceeded to take up the task Mark had given up in favour of burying his hands in Gary’s hair – namely, opening the buttons on his shirt with nimble fingers.

Kissing Mark actually did the trick, because Gary didn’t really give much more thought to what was going to be revealed under his shirt, and whether that was going to be an issue, at least not until the fabric hit the floor and Jay’s hands started curiously wandering over his skin. Gary held his breath a little, when Jason stopped touching him – but then a naked chest pressed up against his back, and Gary realised that Jay had simply needed a second to get rid of his own shirt. He shivered when Jason’s hands returned, now joined by Mark’s, exploring his upper body, his arms, his neck. Kisses were planted here and there, teeth and tongues finding all the places they’d already conquered years ago; and after mere minutes Gary already felt like he was coming out of his skin with arousal. Finally, somebody – Jason – took pity on him and let a hand drift below his belt, where Gary was painfully, desperately hard.

He could _feel_ Jason’s warm chuckle in his back as his fingers traced the outline of Gary’s cock through the fabric of his jeans. “I think someone here has gotten a little worked up, Markie.” Mark – currently in the process of sucking Gary’s right nipple into his mouth – let go to grin up at Jason, and the mischief in his eyes, mixed with his very own brand of excitement, almost made Gary come on the spot.

“Fuck,” he murmured, and Jason softly pulled on his earlobe with his teeth.

“That’s the idea,” he breathed and ground his hips into Gary’s arse. There was no doubt that Jay was just as aroused as Gary, and the hard, undeniable strain of his erection sent a shockwave straight to Gary’s own groin. He had always considered it the biggest turn-on in the world to be somebody else’s turn-on; and the fact that Jason, built-like-a-God-face-of-an-angel-Jason, wanted him, really _wanted_ him, made the last of Gary’s self-doubts disappear into thin air. He pushed his hips back into Jason’s, giving Mark a knowing smile; and Jason moaned in surprise at the friction. For a moment his hands forgot all about their current occupation, and Gary pushed back again, pride rising up inside him. This time, Jason was prepared, though, and took revenge by squeezing Gary through his jeans with just the right amount of pressure.

The moan that left Gary’s lips was embarrassingly loud.

“You should really give me a break,” he managed against Mark’s lips, that were just now finding his again, his fingers pushing a strand of hair out of Mark’s forehead.

“Why?” Mark asked, a seductive whisper into Gary’s mouth, that didn’t exactly help things.

“Because otherwise I’ll come in my pants like some bloody teenager.”

“Mmmh, but maybe that’s just what we want,” Mark pointed out. “You comin’ in your pants like a bloody teenager.”

“Kinky bastard,” Gary growled and pulled Mark in to plant a forceful kiss to his neck. Mark melted into him with a soft sigh, and Gary pushed his hand under his shirt to touch skin. Howard had been right; there were too many clothes involved in this. He signified Mark to get rid of his shirt in a less gentle manner than he might have otherwise, had he not been so wretchedly turned on; but then, that was kind of Mark’s fault, too, so he was in no place to complain.

Though Mark didn’t exactly look like he was going to, any time soon. In fact, he seemed rather pleased with Gary’s frustrated lack of composure. Thinking back, he had always loved to tease Gary to the point of madness with hour-long blowjobs that broke off every time Gary got too close to the edge; until Gary’s frustration had been so great that he’d outright pushed Mark’s head down in the bossiest possible manner – and that had been, more than once, exactly what had gotten Mark off. So, the fact that Gary was on the best way to lose it in his godforsaken jeans while getting progressively fed up with sheer arousal had to be right up Mark’s alley. Gary wondered whether Jason and Mark had arranged this constellation beforehand, or if it was just Mark’s lucky stars. In the end, he concluded that the best way to deal with this was to just roll with it and kiss Mark into oblivion, while Jason proceeded to press against his still-too-bloody-clothed butt and bring him off through his jeans.

How stupid, in retrospect, to have reckoned without Howard. Howard, who was just then appearing behind Mark, out of nowhere, lacking not only for a shirt, but also for anything resembling trousers.

“It’s a little mean to team up on our Captain like that,” Howard breathed into Mark’s ear; and now Mark was the one who was out of his depths, because Howard made short shrift with the buttons on his jeans and let his hand glide down the front of them.

“Mmmh.” Howard sounded like a pleased cat. A very big, pleased cat. Feline predator was probably more like it. Gary could make out the tip of Mark`s swollen cock over the waistband of his jeans, where Howard’s thumb collected a few drops of fluid, and the familiar feeling of viscous honey collecting at the base of his spine told him that he was persistently nearing his peak. Mark was making deliciously throaty sounds and Howard’s mouth started going, whispering filthy things that had just the same spine-tingling effect on Gary that they obviously had on Mark, and also – going by his fast breathing at Gary’s ear and his desperate search for more friction against Gary’s backside – didn’t go unappreciated by Jason.

“You like the bossy ones, I know you do, Markie. The ones who want to tell you what to do. Who tell you _suck me_ , _lick me, get on your knees_. Oh, you love that, don’t you? And then you do exactly what you’re told, and you get them so worked up they can’t see straight any more.“ Howard softly bit the protruding tendon at the side of Mark’s neck, languidly twisted his hand around his cock; and Mark was completely reduced to needy whimpers, sank back into Howard’s body and submitted to his hands and lips and words. It took Gary’s breath away how beautiful they were. “You _enjoy_ that, seeing what you do to Gaz. And what he does to you. He lets you tease him and work him up and _almost_ get him there, again and again, until he can’t bear it anymore. But me...” Howard’s free hand wandered up over Mark’s chest and his fingers pinched a nipple. “I see what you’re doing. I always ‘ave. And once in a while...somebody else should be doing the teasing, Markie.”

With that he pulled his hand out of Mark’s jeans and let it join the other on his chest, drawing small, hypnotic circles. Mark’s hips pushed forward, but he wasn’t quite close enough to Gary to get any sort of friction, and Howard only kissed Mark’s hair and deliberately _didn’t_ touch him. Gary wasn’t quite sure what his game plan was, until Howard opened his mouth again to speak.

“You’re going to have to use your own hands, Markie. You know you want to,” he whispered; and as if Mark had only needed the confirmation that he was _allowed to_ , he let his right hand glide down his trousers with a keening sound in his throat, while his left held on to Gary’s shoulder for dear life. Mark’s wide-eyed gaze, his desperate movements, combined with Howard’s concentrated expression as he watched Mark’s hand move and with Jay still rubbing him through his jeans – it was finally too much for Gary, who’d barely held it together during Howard’s monologue. The world whited out around the edges for a moment or two, and he came with a strangled groan, right in his jeans.

To his infinite gratitude, _nobody_ had been unaffected by the ongoings of the last half hour, and therefore nobody was far behind him. They all kept their eyes on Mark, transfixed, whose face was contorted in pleasure and a certain degree of pain familiar to anyone who had ever chased an orgasm. “Come on, Markie. Come for us,” Gary breathed, tracing the outline of Mark’s left nipple with a single fingertip, before he put on his sternest look. “Or do I have to _make_ you?”

Mark’s eyes flew open, then closed again, and a shudder went through him as he came; Howard’s deep moan and the small noise of Jason reaching his peak an afterthought that prompted Gary’s spent cock to give a helpless twitch. Gary pulled Mark in against his chest and listened to his elevated heartbeat and his fast breathing for a few seconds, before Howard interrupted their collective moment of postcoital bliss to gracelessly usher them over to the closest available bedroom. (“Handjobs while standing up are one thing. Cuddles while standing up are just impractical, and I won’t tolerate that.”)

On the way they all got more or less rid of the rest of their clothes, much of which had been rendered unwearable by their own hands, using them to wipe themselves somewhat clean; and when they finally landed on the bed, Gary spent the first five minutes giving Jay a proper snog, which he hadn’t really done thus far, much to his personal dismay.

“It wasn’t exactly hardship kissing your neck and rubbing up against you, you know?” Jason said when Gary had to let go to take a breath; and _of course_ Jay would know exactly that Gary felt somewhat guilty for not having given him his undivided attention earlier, courtesy of Mark and Howard.

“It’s always goin’ to be sharing with us, and everybody gets a different-size piece of everybody’s attention every day. That’s how we work. In the end, it’s always going to be a balancing act.,” Jason said, warmly. He didn’t sound cross at all.

“And it’s worth it,” Howard said, stretching his arm out to sling it around Jason’s waist. “It’s so worth it.”

“It is,” Jay agreed and pressed a small kiss to the corner of Gary’s mouth, before he turned around in Howard’s arms and rang another long-overdue snogging session in.

“I’m glad...” Mark began; and Gary could tell that he was having problems getting out whatever it was he wanted to say. He wordlessly took Mark’s hand and squeezed it, giving him time to find the right words.

“I’m glad we got this back, too, you know?” he finally said.  
“The shagging?” Gary asked with a quizzical tilt of his head, and Mark laughed.

“Yes. The shagging. And no. Not only the shagging. I mean, it’s fantastic, it always was, and I’m a real fan of orgasms. But. It’s more than that. I think that...being together in that way... The fact that we haven’t forgotten how to be like this – it gives me hope.”

Gary rolled on his side to look Mark in the eye, resting their joint hands on Mark’s chest.

“Hope for what?”

Mark smiled at him. “For this not being just a one-off thing? For albums? Tours? Merchandise?” He paused. “For the future, basically.”

A half-giddy, half-apologetic look snuck on Gary’s face, and Mark eyed him for a few seconds, before his expression turned into an exhilarated mix of surprise and hope. “No, you haven’t.”

Gary bit his lip. “I have. It’s already on CD.”

Mark shook his head in disbelief, but he was also smiling from one ear to the other, infectiously. “You’re goin’ to play that to me. To us. Very, very soon.”

Gary couldn’t but smile back. “I promise. Just have a little patience, Mark.”


End file.
